Merry Christmas from DiscoPosse.com!

It has been an incredible year of growth, networking, and opportunities for me and the DiscoPosse.com site. Everyone has been so amazing with coming to the site for information, sharing and interacting with me here, on Twitter (@DiscoPosse) and at conferences and meetups throughout the year. It is with great thanks to my readers and to my always supportive sponsors that this has come together.

To celebrate the Christmas spirit, I wanted to talk about some of the great community events that made this a year to remember. Here are a few quick highlights from 2013.

Virtual Design Master

Together with Angelo Luciani (http://www.virtuwise.com) the Virtual Design Master (http://www.virtualdesignmaster.com/) successfully ran through its first season in 2013. The work by our competitors and by our judges was amazing and the whole program became a worldwide sensation with the help of our sponsors baremetalcloud.com, Pluralsight (www.pluralsight.com), and Radical I/O (www.radicalio.com). I’m looking forward to see what our story creator (@vmiss33) and the team will come up with as our 2014 design scenario!

VMworld 2013

Sitting at the bloggers table during the keynote was one of the highlights of this year. There was a whirlwind of activity in the hang space and all around the conference. People who I’ve followed have become a part of my peer group. I have been able to interact with so many incredible people and learn so much along the way. Great efforts from John Troyer and Corey Romero produced a phenomenal experience for all of us at the event. I’m already counting down to San Francisco in 2014!

VMUG

This year I joined the leadership team for the Toronto VMUG (Angelo Luciani, Mike Preston, Ryan Goff) and it has been a great opportunity to share in the knowledge pool that we are building with the help of the VMUG organization.

If you don’t already attend the VMUG, I highly encourage you to do so. It is free, fun, and has great potential to increase your value in many ways as you explore virtualization and VMware technologies. Go to http://vmug.com/ to find your local group and we look forward to seeing you there.

vBrownbag – Now including OpenStack

Each Tuesday and Wednesday night, a growing group of IT enthusiasts meets online to share information on products, processes and everything in technology. There are actually many other sessions being run in Latin America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific which is a testament to the value that this has created for all of us as participants.

I have been lucky enough to be able to be a part of the freshly built OpenStack vBrownbag and I look forward to being able to contribute more in 2014. Sign up here to be a part of the live sessions, and you can also view all previous sessions online: http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/

Podcasting for Cancer

In the ultimate embodiment of community, one tweet turned into a movement. It may seem small to some, but the depth of the commitment that was put towards this effort was felt by many and I can definitely say that it moved me greatly to see what the team did to put it all together. Hats off to Trevor Pott for kicking this off and for Jon Harris, Jonathan Frappier, and Josh Folland for what they did. Read more here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/podcasting-for-cancer/ and follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/vpodcasting.

We celebrate these holidays with our families. Thanks to the reach of social media, the blogging community, and all of the opportunities we have to stay in touch, we are all family.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone, and thank you for all that you do to inspire and support me. There are great things ahead for all of us!